[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 142 (Saturday, October 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12281-S12283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               OSHA LEGISLATION DURING THE 105TH CONGRESS

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I can think of few issues that are more 
important to the average American than the safety and health of our 
Nation's workers. During the last 2 years, Congress stepped up to the 
plate and confronted this important issue head-on. The end result was 
three separate bills becoming law that amended the Occupational Safety 
and Health Act of 1970. Until this year, in 28 years, the act was 
amended one time--in 1990--and that was to increase fines. The American 
workplace has changed quite a bit over the last three decades and I'm 
pleased that Congress in now changing, too.
  During the first session of the 105th Congress, I introduced a 
comprehensive piece of legislation with the support of

[[Page S12282]]

Senator Gregg and Frist and 20 other Senate cosponsors, entitled the 
Safety Advancement for Employees Act or SAFE Act. At the same time, my 
good friend, Jim Talent, introduced similar legislation in the House 
which received strong, bipartisan support--a rarity for such a 
polarized issue.
  It is important to understand that both the Senate and House versions 
did not attempt to reinvent OSHA's wheel, just change its tires. 
Treading water for 27 years, OSHA has never seriously attempted to 
encourage employers and employees in their efforts to create safe and 
healthful workplaces. Instead, OSHA chose to operate according to a 
command and control mentality. This approach has lead to burdensome and 
often incomprehensible regulations which do not relate to worker safety 
and health and are, quite often, only sporadically enforced.
  The AFL-CIO publically acknowledges that with only 2,450 State and 
Federal inspectors regulating 6.2 million American worksites, an 
employer can expect to see an inspector once every 167 years. In 
addition to this enormous time lapse, the sheer diversity of safety and 
health concerns stemming from restaurants to funeral homes across 
America prohibits an inspector from fully understanding each worker's 
needs and concerns.
  OSHA seems more concerned about collecting fines each year than it is 
about improving worker safety. OSHA proposes over $140 million in fines 
to be paid by the regulated public each year--over $100 million of that 
total gets assessed. Even more troubling is that OSHA's existing 
voluntary and cooperative compliance programs impact a mere fraction of 
worksites and consume only a small share of the agency's annual budget. 
Despite OSHA's claim that it is ``putting a lot of resources into 
compliance assistance and partnership initiatives,'' only 22 percent of 
OSHA's 1997 fiscal appropriation was spent on federal and state plan 
compliance assistance. It is difficult for anyone to say that current 
initiatives are having an impact on the number of workplace fatalities 
and injuries when OSHA spends so little of its annual funds on 
preventive measures.
  It is important to point out that the SAFE Act would not have 
dismantled OSHA's enforcement capabilities. It was that approach 
that kept Congress from amending the 1970 statute for so long. 
Enforcement alone, though, will never ensure the safety of our nation's 
workplaces and the health of our working population. By encouraging 
employers to seek individualized compliance assistance from OSHA 
qualified third party consultants, the SAFE Act would ensure that more 
American workplaces are in compliance with existing law while allowing 
OSHA to concentrate its enforcement resources on those worksites that 
truly need immediate attention. America would be better served by an 
OSHA that manages its resources more wisely and the SAFE Act was 
crafted to strike that balance.

  In addition to establishing OSHA qualified third party consultations, 
the SAFE Act included additional voluntary and technical compliance 
initiatives to assist employers in deeming their worksites ``safe'' for 
their employees. I firmly believe that it is this approach that will 
ultimately bring a greater number of workplaces into compliance with 
existing law and help prevent more workers from being injured or killed 
on the job.
  The SAFE Act would ensure that federal occupational safety and health 
standards are based on sound, scientific data that all vested parties 
can live with. By injecting independent scientific peer review into the 
rule-making process, future regulations would reflect greater clarity 
and simplicity--helping businesses to better understand what they are 
required to do. I also believe that scientific peer review will help 
speed up the implementation process for OSHA's rules by eliminating 
conflicts of interest. Under the present system, draft rules can idle 
in the process for more than 15 years, because no one agrees on the 
rule's scientific validity. At the same time, annual funding continues 
to be channeled toward research at the expense of the taxpayer. That 
must change.
  Last October, we marked up the SAFE Act in the Senate Committee on 
Labor and Human Resources and favorably reported the bill out of 
committee. In the following months, I continued to work with Senators 
Kennedy, Dodd, Wellstone, and Reed--as well as with Assistant Secretary 
of Labor, Charles Jeffress, to find common ground that would result in 
a bill that would pass the House and Senate and be signed by the 
President into law. A number of good suggestions were made to improve 
the bill, but remaining differences and the lack of floor time quickly 
became an insurmountable obstacle.
  I was pleased to have the opportunity to testify at a hearing chaired 
by Chairman Talent in the House Small Business Committee. As the House 
author of the SAFE Act, Representative Talent understood the importance 
of third party consultations. He invited specialists in occupational 
safety and health to share their candid opinions of the bill. Having 
witnessed the testimony firsthand, I was pleased that safety and health 
professionals--those who have the most education, training, and field 
experience in abating occupational hazards--embraced this bill so 
enthusiastically.
  In both Chambers, the SAFE Act gained considerable momentum after its 
introduction. The bill stuck to a theme--advancing safety and health in 
the workplace. Maintaining this spirit of cooperation, it is my 
intention to promote this theme well into the 106th Congress. Until 
each of the SAFE Act's provisions become law, this debate is far from 
over.

  Despite the Senate's inability to complete its consideration of the 
SAFE Act, legislative successes were still abundant. Last June, I was 
pleased to have had the opportunity to pass two bills in the Senate 
that were authored by Representative Ballenger. One was the 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration Compliance Assistance 
Authorization Act, and the other was H.R. 2877, which eliminated the 
imposition of quotas in the context of OSHA's enforcement activities. 
Both bills are now law and have already been implemented by OSHA.
  Following the same lines as the SAFE Act, these two bills were 
written to increase the joint cooperation of employees, employers, and 
OSHA in the effort to ensure safe and healthful working conditions. It 
will never be productive to threaten employers with fines for non-
compliance when millions of safety conscious employers don't know how 
they are supposed to comply. Nor is it effective to burden employers 
with more compliance materials than they can possibly digest or 
understand, many of which have no application to their business. To 
achieve a new, cooperative approach, the vast majority of employers who 
are concerned about worker safety and health must have compliance 
assistance programs made more accessible to them and more related to 
their actual operation. Passage of H.R. 2864 was a good, first step in 
providing employers just that.
  H.R. 2877 eliminated enforcement quotas for OSHA compliance 
inspectors. This bill prohibits OSHA from establishing a specific 
number of citations issued, or the amount of penalties collected. I 
believe that inspectors must not face institutional pressure to issue 
citations or collect fines, but rather they should work to identify 
potential hazards and assist the employer in abating them. OSHA's 
success must depend upon whether the nation's workforce is safer and 
healthier, and not upon meeting or surpassing goals for inspections, 
citations, or penalties.
  In July, both the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and 
full Senate unanimously passed S. 2112, the Postal Employees Safety 
Enhancement Act. The bill was written to bring the Postal Service and 
its more than 800,000 employees under the full jurisdiction of OSHA. 
Government must play by its own rules. Although all federal agencies 
must comply with the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health statute, they 
are not required to pay penalties issued to them by OSHA. The lack of 
any enforcement tool renders compliance requirements for the public 
sector ineffective at best.
  My first look at this issue occurred when Yellowstone National Park 
was cited by OSHA last February for 600 violations--92 of them serious. 
One of those serious violations was the park's failure to report an 
employee's death to OSHA. In fact, Yellowstone posted five employee 
deaths in the past three

[[Page S12283]]

and one-half years. Although there are these and other serious problems 
noted in the park's safety and health record, overall federal injury, 
illness, lost work-time, fatality and workers's compensation rates show 
the United States Postal Service leading the pack in almost every 
category.

  Postal workers injuries and illnesses represent 42 percent of the 
government's lost-time cases. From 1992 to 1997, the Postal Service 
paid an annual average of $505 million in workers' compensation costs 
and its annual contribution accounted for almost on-third of the 
federal program's $1.8 billion price tag. These alarming statistics 
made my decision to slowly bring the federal government into compliance 
rather easy.
  In 1982, the Postal Service became fiscally self-sufficient--
depending entirely on market-driven revenues rather than taxpayer 
dollars. They should be congratulated for that. Today, the United 
States Postal Service handles over 43 percent of the world's mail--
delivering more mail in one week than Federal Express and the United 
Parcel Service combined deliver in an entire year. With annual profits 
that exceed $1.5 billion, if the Postal Service were a private company, 
it would be the 9th largest business in the United States and 29th in 
the entire world.
  Realistically speaking, the Postal Service is hardly a federal 
agency. It's better characterized as a self-sufficient, quasi-
government entity. It is the only federal agency where its employees 
can collectively bargain under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. 
It's the only federal agency that posts annual profits exceeding $1.5 
billion. In fact, the Postal Service exhibits almost every 
characteristic of a private business, yet it never had to fully comply 
with federal occupational safety and health law--until now. Last month, 
Representative Greenwood, author of the House bill, took the initiative 
to pass the Postal Employees Safety Enhancement Act in the House and 
sent it on to the President.
  Since the bill's enactment, I learned that OSHA and the National Park 
Service, have entered into safety pact. I commend both agencies for 
this commitment to workplace safety and health. It is my understanding 
that other federal agencies could do the same. I hope that such 
agreements with OSHA represent a way to introduce third party 
consultations as a means of bringing a greater number of federal 
worksites into compliance.
  The enactment of S. 2112 and the previous two bills marks the first 
significant step toward modernizing the nation's 28 year-old 
occupational safety and health law. I believe that these incremental 
accomplishment were achieved because this Congress is committed to 
improving conditions for America's workers. We have a long road ahead 
of us and that road, so far, had been too slow to save American lives. 
This debate will not end when Congress completes its work this year. I 
fully intent to press forward--well into the 106th Congress. More 
hearings on this important issue are necessary. We need a bipartisan 
effort--making headway in every area we can reach agreement. We need to 
dedicate some time to reaching that agreement. This will not happen by 
accident! Good legislation will ultimately be achieved and increased 
compliance will undoubtedly result if we simply remain committed to it.

  I want to conclude my remarks by thanking members and staff for 
making occupational safety and health such a successful issue during 
the last two years. I want to first thank my House colleague and friend 
Jim Talent. His impressive knowledge of labor law, complemented by his 
labor counsel, Jennifer Woodbury, helped bring the SAFE Act to the 
attention of all House members. I look forward to work on many more 
bills with Jim Talent in the coming years. I would also like to thank 
Congressmen Ballenger, Greenwood, and McHugh and their staff. They, 
too, should be complimented for their efforts. Senators Gregg, Frist, 
and Jeffords also deserve tremendous thanks. Their staffs spent many 
hours considering OSHA legislation. Finally, I want to thank my 
Democratic colleagues on the Senate Labor Committee. Senator Kennedy 
was especially considerate in listening to my concerns and I want to 
extend my appreciation to him and his staff. I am confident that this 
relationship will pick up next year where it left off.

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